Should the United Nations use ATS to recruit?

For the last couple of months, I have been crawling through United Nations (#UN) and its affiliates’ web pages, job descriptions, and terms of references - as I am now open to new opportunities.

The process reminded me of an unfortunate experiance.

Most #UN organizations have been, I assume, receiving thousands of applications from all corners of the world. This brings both a blessing – that organizations have an abundance of talent at their disposal to choose from, and a burden – that they need to find a means to screen and find out a suiting candidate from the sea of applicants. In an attempt to lessen the burden, many now have resorted to using what is commonly known as applicant tracking systems (#ATSs).

These automated tools depend on keywords identified and fed by hiring managers and/or human resource professionals. These automated bots, then, creep through thousands of submissions or resumes to shorten the list to a manageable number – to what is dubbed as a long list in the United Nations systems.

Many United Nations organizations, if not all, depend on these bots for screening and producing a long list of candidates. What it means is that candidates who have a better knack for these words have a huge chance of reaching the second phase – human eyes. Leaving aside the intentional and unintentional human errors and biases, once an application makes it to this phase, the likelihood of success is huge, statistically speaking.

Thus, this is a critical skill set – to skim through job descriptions and identify the keywords that might be fed into the ATS. ?Then, integrating these buzzwords into one’s resume will put the person a few steps behind from grabbing her dream job.

One can argue, however, against and raise a moral question on the use of ATSs. They can cite one of the tech giants – #Google's – experience in their defence. #Google by far is one of the largest recruiters in the world. It receives over three million applications and recruits close to ten thousand every year (1). Google’s motto, nonetheless, is impressive: all applications should pass through a human being (2). In the corporate world, “80%-90% of […] management resumes and CVs are rejected?before?they are even seen by human eyes” (3). I would assume the same is true in the United Nations. The vast majority of worthy applications won’t make it to the long list phase. This is one of the critical dilemmas of using ATS.

#buzzwords, #keywords, #UN, #Humanresource, #Recuirtment, #ATS

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1. ?Google’s project oxygen: https://rework.withgoogle.com/subjects/hiring/

2. Work Rules! Insights from Inside Google that Will Transform How you Live and Lead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeQ0Q6YMxj4

3. Read more at airiodion:?https://www.airiodion.com/best-keywords-project-manager-resume/